‘We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom.’ It was an Fb platitude, but it seemed appropriate after seeing this. Oliver Stone has earned a reputation as one of cinema’s foremost chroniclers of contemporary American society – albeit with critics along the way sniping at him for the liberties he might occasionally take with the facts. His films have delved into the assassination of JFK, the psychedelia of the Doors and the war in Vietnam (in which he served), so it was to be expected that he would eventually turn his attention to the digital age and governments’ response to the threat of terrorism. Telling the story of Edward Snowden, the whistle-blower who exposed the secretive surveillance of its own citizens that US agencies indulged in, frequently illegally, Stone is, of course, preaching to the outraged converted. But is he (was Snowden?) telling us anything we don’t know? I doubt it. And as one who expects his safety and comfort to be secured by any means, I have to admit that it seems vaguely hair-shirtish that we in the liberal-thinking West would get our knickers in a knot over it. En masse we rush to blurt out whatever flies into our heads on a plethora of social media outlets, but want to take umbrage at the thought that what we make ‘public’ it is being noted to guard against others blowing us up. As happened to the sad Kim Philby, Snowden now lives as an exile in Moscow (where they don’t spy on their citizens – haha), having been detained there on his way to sanctuary in Ecuador (where journos who expose truths unpalatable to the ruling regime routinely ‘disappear’). It’s a film that is expertly made but, perhaps owing to its towering self-importance and high-minded imbalance, is lacking in tension.
Fantastic performances from Joseph-Gordon Levitt in the part of the eponymous ‘hero’, Shailene Woodley as his pole-dancing girlfriend and a creepy Rhys Ifans as a CIA knob don’t quite make up for the boredom that descends in the overlong third act.
